Last Wednesday the World Bank eDevelopment Thematic Group held a workshop on “The Singapore Experience” - how the small country Singapore achieved the transformation to become economically that successful and one of the countries with the most government services accessible by mobile phone or internet.

The notes from the different speakers can be accessed under the following links:

• eTG workshop - The Singapore Experience - part 1
• eTG workshop - The Singapore Experience - part 2

The reason for the whole eTransformation was the desire to attract foreign investment on the one hand, and the will to foster public construction to provide public housing for the citizens. This led to improvements in regulations and the attempt in many sectors to hide the complexity of the government bureaucracy away from the individuals and companies, providing the services of many agencies on an online platform.

The speakers came mostly from the private sector, as Singapore managed its transformation mostly by forming public-private partnerships, with companies providing government services. These companies have gained a lot of experience now, and also consult other nations all over the world on their strategy to implement eServices.

One key aspect of Singapore’s eTransformation was the presence of a long term vision concerning ICT which was in place for 20 years already. The vision was created with changes in technology and administration processes in mind - so these changes didn’t render the vision useless, but were rather absorbed by it.

Another substantial point in Singapore’s eTransformation process was the persistent work with all stakeholders to have everybody on the “same page” of the process. The different agencies involved in the provided services were trained to implement ICT and to share data digitally.

All in all the event gave a complete and interesting insight into the development of the ICT strategy of Singapore and showcased a role model for other nations aiming to focus on the provision of eServices to their citizens. Also it was encouraging to hear about Singapore’s interests in helping and supporting other nations.

Notes from the World Bank eDevelopment Thematic Group workshop on “The Singapore Experience“ on 30 September in Washington DC.

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Sharing on Government Transformation by Crimsonlogic Pte Ltd

Topic: eGovernance to yield greater socio-economic impact

Speaker: Mr. TAN Sian Lip, Vice President

Public private partnership company

• built by Singapore government
• run as a private company
• providing government services

Singapore Trade Facilitation Journey

On the last 20 years

• Almost everybody in the trade-sector changed their technology
• Administrative roles changed in the last 20 years
• The public didn’t experience any change

Tradenet

• Harmonizing trade admission procedures for companies evolved
• “TradeNet -World’s First Nationwide Electronic Data Interchange System”
• Minimizing processing time for admission to 1 minute
• there exist 2 business case studies, it has been well documented
• many international partnerships, facilitating trade on ports worldwide

Singapore eJudiciary

LawNet

• Platform for processing legal information
• Keeping data digital
• Less hardcopies
• Higher clearance rate
• Cases take shorter time
• Transparency through online availability of cases
• good rating in international comparison

Lessons learnt - Principles of eGovernment

• The application of IT to transform the way governments work, to make them friendlier and more effective
• It is not (just) a large portfolio of technology projects
• It is a large ongoing program of activities involving public administrators and technologists in rethinking how government & the public can work together, and then applying technology to effect the changes

Infrastructure: e-things change all the time, there is always something better

• you should plan carefully so that changes don’t destroy your system, but can be absorbed

Constraints:

• There are never enough resources to design & build all possible eServices

It’s important to build the eServices which have the biggest impact on citizens and business

Partnerships between governments and private companies in developing and implementing services on a risk-and investment-sharing basis

Q & A:

Is there a legalframework for exchangig data online?

• electronic transactions act - very broad
• Computer misuse act
• In Singapore PKI is not so common
• Electronic banking has existed for years and transactions not signed with PKI

Is there competition for IDA in Singapore?

• yes, there is international competition, other companies are bidding for contracts too, but so far no success

Who selects what applications have the highest impact on citizens and businesses?

• The specific agencies decide what the governmental agenda should be
• Then they have to fight for the budget

Common components for eServices?

• Governance is primary
• Architecture is handmade into it
• Basic network, basic logging mechanism, web service gateways, portal infrastructure should be common

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Sharing on Government Transformation by NCS Pte Ltd

Topic: Effective Development – Why is there a need for Public Services Infrastructure (PSi)

Speaker: Mr. NG Beng Lim, General Manager

Company: NCS - national computer system

• providing government services

Key concerns in Singapore:

• economic growth
• education
• utilization of resources
• making society a better place
• how to use IT to promote these issues?

Areas to address:

• governance, administration
• services for citizens
• integrating IT into society
• better management of resources
• developing economy based on IT - in the long term

Every country has to have a clear masterplan what to do with IT

• But how to come from the masterplan to an implementation and successful rollout?

Transformation of IT during the 80s and 90s to today

• Nowadays the prerequisites for successful eServices rollout are ideal
• In early 2000 - government in Singapore started Public Services Infrastructure
• Interface for people to interact with the government
• open infrastructure to more providers - including the private sector

Public Services Infrastructure Components:

• Government Network
• Common Data Centre
• Application Infrastructure
• Common Desktop Services

Features:

• Single sign on
• SMS, email gateway
• personalisation
• service delivery framwork
• ePayment
• Orchestration
• multilingual

Results:

• PSi was started 10 years ago
• Today: SHINE (Service Wide Hosting Environment) by NCS
• Billing model: Subscription-based
• Evens out peak CPU utilisation
• SHINE: Hosting, services and storing on demand

NCS - in the mean time a lot of experience in eGovernment & National ICT Planning

Q & A:

Does the government have a centralised architecture?

• Yes, in Singapore the government came up with a centralized infrastructure

What about security standards?

• The IT infrastructure has to come with an own security framework already

Key objecticves in terms of consilidating the data?

• Make people use the system
• “Selling” tools to the ministries

Many agencies - one government. Government has to have the oversight, but agencies have to have the freedom to act on themselves.

Is there a trend for re-centralization?

• It’s technologically possible
• Is it possible to monitor all local spots where services are running?

Notes from the World Bank eDevelopment Thematic Group workshop on “The Singapore Experience“ on 30 September in Washington DC.

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Welcome Remarks by Mr. Deepak Bhatia, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, GICT and Ms. Angela PNG, Deputy Director of International Organisation, International Enterprise Singapore

Knowledge sharing event - how Singapore became a leader in eGovernment

Singapore ranked first in eGovernment ranking in four consecutive years, global competitiveness index: 3rd

One factor for that - policy to utilize ICTs in national development

A lot of problems to overcome - e.g. technophobia

Today: ICT masterplan, holistic

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Opening Remarks by Mr. Sun Vithespongse, Southeast Asia Executive Director and Mr. Mohsen Khalil, Director, Global ICT Department (TBC)

Singapore:

• small country with no resources
• therefore it has to be developed in ICTs to become efficient

World Bank group is the biggest sponsor in eGovernment - and has experiences large successes

World Bank should keep on the work, despite the financial crisis

Development in the industry

• a lot of innovation is happening in the developing world
• south-to-north and south-to-south developments

What can ICTs be useful for?

• Powerful transformation forces turning around the way we do business

The integral structure of of governement and important private sectors and their cooperation is very important

Harnessing the power of ICTs is a government and behavioural issue - rather than a technological issue

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Sharing on Government Transformation by IDA International

Topic: Singapore’s ICT Journey - The Past 30 years and the Next 5 years.

Speaker: Mr. YEONG Wee Tan, Deputy Director

ICT sector in Singapore

• 40 bn US$
• 140 000 IT professionals

Six national ICT plans

• Computerisation
• Communication
• Connectivity
• Convergence
• Connectedness
• Creation

It’s necessary to start a dialog on learned lessons - between Singapore and the other nations

A lot of working with foreign agencies

IDA International - Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore

• partnering with other governments, sharing lessons of Singapore and advising them
• not a vendor
• living their lessons
• helping to integrate ICTs

Sharing lessons on different levels

• Infrastructure
• Human capacity - The countries need to have sustainable human capital to carry on with their policies
• Industry and Government
• Governance - which legal framework is necessary
• Outcomes - What are the aims?

Within 15 minutes you can register a Singaporian company around the world

GrBiz - Government to Business open platform

We want to get people used to make everything “e”

• There are 200 government services available on a handheld in Singapore
• Also as a tourist you get all these services available
• A lot of learning devices for schools - “Future schools in Singapore” - to be on the forefront of development
• Also health care projects

Government must evolve to be an open ecosystem

Together with agencies like the World Bank we can teach also other countries how to integrate ICTs in their services and transform their operations

eTransformation can create a better world through ICT

Q & A:

Question about public trust - everything is digital now, do people trust in the system?

• Everybody has one number - took quite a while to harmonize that
• In the beginning of the journey there were problems, but in the mean time people have accepted it
• There is a lot of public consultation

Infrastructure is important but education too - how to talk to ministries trying to prioritize?

Cross agency information sharing?

• There always political trouble  - but the important point is communicate, communicate, communicate the overall goal to everbody
• It’s important to bring the stakeholders together and convince them

What motivates Singapore for international coperation? Typical cooperation between the agency and another country?

• One strategic plan in the Singapore ICT plan is internationalization
• It’s also an export industry, not everything for free - but not a typical consultor, we are there to help people get on the IT journey
• It’s important for us to give back to the world
• We act like a trusted adviser to the government

Do you have an administrative reform plans for the country and how is it linked to the ICT plan?

• Definitely, everything is balanced between administrative reforms, governments processes, … to have everybody on the same page, it’s still ongoing

Comments:

It’s very encouraging to see this international exchange, Singapore is currently working on a P2P portal for government transformation

Sometimes you need to break established ways of work and act outside the framework

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Sharing on Government Transformation by novaCITYNETS Pte Ltd

Topic: e-Transformation to a First World City

Speaker: Ms. Joyce WONG, EVP

Singapore in the 1960 had big problems - a developing country

• GDP per capita: 427$

Several measures to overcome the situation

• Public housing
• Attracting foreign investment - to create jobs

Making Singapore a good place for investment

• Infrastructure improvement - water, electricity, roads, …
• Well thought our master plan
• Constant reform
• Concept plan = blueprint
• Master plan = vision
• Construction = concrete measures
• Twenty years plan

A lot of construction activities

Many issues faced when dealing with construction permits from different agencies

Introduction of COREnet

• streamline and reengineer the processes in the construction industry
• e-submission system launched in 2001
• business re-engineering, project design, training, industry promotion, …
• Interface for businesses to interact with the government
• Variety of agencies are hidden behind the online portal - single point of access
• big success story, companies make use of it, big increase in efficiency

In 2009

• 16 participating agencies
• 700 application forms (2001) to 231
• 30% improvement in turnaround time

Information on eTransformation in Sri Lanka

• All building blocks for a strong eGovernment solution were not in place - when NCS came to rescue
• Trying to replicate the experience of Singapore - but adapt it to the situation in Sri Lanka

Yesterday, 16 September, the workshop Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation: From Pilots to Scaled-up Implementation, initiated by the eDevelopment Thematic Group (eTG) of the World Bank took place.

It was already the 7th workshop we covered on our blog, Twitter and social media since we started our partnership with eTG, and the topic was especially interesting for us - considering the unique role of mobile phones in developing countries nowadays.

The workshop was split in six parts, each having as leitmotif a certain sector where mobile services are used.

• Part 1 focused on an Overview of Mobile Innovations Space and Enabling Environment
• Part 2 focused on Mobile Innovations in Financial Services
• Part 3 focused on Mobile Innovations in Health
• Part 4 focused on Mobile Innovations in Education
• Part 5 focused on Mobile Applications in Agriculture and Rural Development
• Part 6 focused on Mobile Innovations in Governance

There are some photos which Oleg Petrov took during the event on the ICT4D.at Flickr account.

The speakers came from various sectors - the World Bank, private and public sector, the academia and practicioners in the field.

Many of them claimed what I also already heard in several other conferences - the technology is there, now we have to focus on applications and business models. Although several successful projects were presented, there were general complaints that often such projects don’t bypass the “pilot” stage and don’t achieve sustainability. The topic of scaling projects to reach more audience and higher impact was also mentioned several times. More evaluation on impact and sharing information on failures of projects was identified as two ways to overcome this problem. Also the concept of private-public partnerships and searching strong, committed partners for implementing mobile solutions was put forward once more.

More detailed information can be found in the blog posts linked above and on Twitter. Under the hashtag #mobile09 the lively online discussion surrounding the event can be followed - several contributors gave this event quite a drive. The comments there had a more critical viewpoint on mobile phones as the big solution for all problems.

What was interesting for me personally was that obviously there is no real large scale project out there which is profitable so far. M-Pesa is the only one which scratches the border but also has trouble creating revenue. Impressive non-profit examples where projects which used mobile phones for delivering services to the poor and as enhancements in education.

So all in all the event gave a feeling that there is potential for more to come in the mobile sector and several great examples were given - but the “killer application” is obviously still to come, or maybe there’s even no need for it, because it’s so easy to set up an own, localized application.

Yesterday, the workshop Ethics, Roles and Relationships in Interaction Design in Developing Regions took place in Uppsala, Sweden and around the world, as people where joining presentations and discussions online including from the UK, Madeira, and Malaysia. The workshop is part of the INTERACT2009 conference, which takes place from 24-28 August.

Eight very interesting papers were presented and discussed during the workshop. For example, Andy Dearden raised the question of how to analyse the risks of unintended consequences; Maira Carvalho investigated different approaches for designing interactive systems at a distance, where researchers don’t have access to the users; Chu Yin Wong presented a user-centred design process for developing a mobile community service addressing the deaf in Malaysia; Eugene Danilkis and Sofia Nunes presented results from their field research on mobile banking in Mozambique; Pam McLean talked about the work she is doing at Dadamac, and how this can benefit researchers.

An important issue that Ida Horner raised in her presentation, and which we have also experienced during our work in Zanzibar, was the importance of doing research in the field and familiarising yourself with the environment, before implementing anything. Ida stressed that it is particularly important to understand how communities are organised. Otherwise researchers run into conflicts before they even started.

Overall, I expected the workshop to focus more on interaction design and experiences regarding methodologies, while most of the discussions that followed each presentation focused on ethical issues, often raising high-level problems that interaction designers might not always be able to solve. These issues were also reflected by the workshop themes, but the questions that remained for me where: what is the role of interaction designers in developing regions, how is it different to their role in more traditional contexts, and what are appropriate methodologies?

An interesting discussion emerged around problem solving, which seems to be a very engineering/technology-driven approach, and whether this approach is appropriate in a developing context. Are interaction designers solving problems? And are researchers bound to only generate new knowledge and understanding, but not supposed to solve problems? Although being an academic I personally don’t completely agree on that, but maybe that is only because I always had one foot in industry projects as well. I would be interested to hear others’ opinions on this.

We also presented our paper Designing an SMS-based application for seaweed farmers in Zanzibar (and why it failed for now) at the Workshop. In this paper we discuss a project that we started, while we were in Tanzania again last year, working on the Hello Africa movie. The project described in the paper was not successful measured by our initial goals. It was successful given the insights that we gained by applying a user-centred design approach in the field. The aim of the paper is to share our conclusions of why the project failed, since we believe that many projects in an African context might experience similar challenges. Below are the slides from our presentation.

All workshop papers are available from here. Many thanks to Andy Dearden and Niall Winters for organising this event! It’s a really valuable step towards better understanding the roles and ethical issues interaction designers need to be aware of in developing contexts.

Notes from the World Bank workshop “Investing in Broadband Infrastructure for Economic Stimulus and Growth” in Washington.

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Welcome and Introductions

Melanie Marlette, Country Manager for Moldova, World Bank

Topic: What is the potential for broadband investment for economic stimulus and growth?

New initiative: Moldova - eDevelopment thematic group

• Wants to partner with government, private sector, …

Oleg Rotaru, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Information Development, Moldova

Initiative is very efficient and useful for the government of Moldova

Moldovo is currently developing a national strategy for ICT for development

• not only with private companies
• also government structures
• not only at broadband level
• new generation of services - also implementing eScience, eSociety, … in Moldova
• broadband is prerequisite

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Opening Remarks

Philippe Dongier, Manager, Global ICT, World Bank

Recent World Bank study - relation between access to broadband and economic growth

• increasing access to broadband by 10% increases economic growth by 1.3%
• for high income economies as well as low income economies

agressive broadband structures

Finland: aim = access of 100% of population to connections with 100 MB/sec

Recent trend - public-private partnerships

• private sector makes investment
• public sector creating incentives, providing legal framework and supporting private sector

Martin Raiser, Country Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, World Bank

Melanie Marlette, Country Manager for Moldova, World Bank

Questions:

• How can countries with significant budget deficits invest in broadband programs?
• What is the rationale for continued investment?
• What are you currently spending and what is required to catch up with Western Europe?
• What role is there for the private sector?

Belarus:

• Concerning the study linking economic growth and broadband access - how did you define the demand for these services? Sometimes people aren’t aware that they want the service. Furthermore: did you look at the relation between private and public services?

Russia:

• The state offers the infrastructure backbone, the private sector offers the content - e.g. eBusiness. However, nothing can happen over night - rural areas are still in need for infrastructure, which can be accomplished by national public programs. Generally: what is the unit of measurement of broadband access - considering different structures in the countres?

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Overview

Juan Navas-Sabater, Senior ICT Policy Specialist, Global ICT, World Bank

Boadband investment in the context of economic stimulus

What are countries doing for the economic recovery?

• e.g. Corea invested heavily in broadband infrastructure -> much bigger growth after the crisis
• ICT industry can generate employment
• ICT can raise productivity

What are countries doing in response to the crisis?

• Many are spending in infrastructure
• The amount of money spend is very different in different countries
• Especially countries from the OECD invest in broadband - increase level of service for existing services, reach out to the ones not benefitting so far
• Could be a good policy for developing countres

What is the World Bank doing?

• INFRA initiative - Infrastructure Recovery and Assets
• Fundraising activities

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The Role of Broadband Investments in Economic Recovery

Taylor Reynolds, Communications Analyst and Economist, OECD

Original presentation can be downloaded here

2 questions:

Can communication infrastructure investment be used as an effective economic stimulus?

If governments decide to invest, how can they structure projects for maximum benefit?

During crisis we are interested in quick demand stimulus

Why network investments?

• core network investments (roads, airports, electricity) have significant impact on economic productivity
• impact on demand (projects are labour intensive & can be started quick) and supply (foundation for commerce)

Goals

• Stimulate the economy on demand side through construction projects for infrastructure rollout
• Increase the productive capacity of the economy via spillovers from broadband networks
• Bridge the digital divide and improve competition

How public funds are being used for broadband

• broadband pretty similar to roads
• high/middle/low capacity networks
• all three different sectors should be considered

Fibre optics serve for all types of broadband internet access

1 fibre strand the thickness of human hair can hold 3 billion simultaneous phone calls

Policy and investment

• regulatory frameworks are substantial when investing in broadband
• couple with pro-competitive regulations
• it’s vital to couple policy and investment

Case: Mexico

• Goal: bringing broadband to all people, opening up national markets
• Problem: lacking policy

Telecom investment with limited funds

• Search for most efficient way to invest in
• Specific bottlenecks: Policies for competition in the market, backhaul networks to lay the foundation, providing schools and government buildings with networks, then sharing with the private sectore - public private partnerships

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Country Case Study: Spain

Cristóbal Guzmán López, Vocal Asesor de la Unidad de Apoyo - Dirección General para el Desarrollo de la Sociedad de la Información, Spain

Avanza plan to develop the information society and ICT sector in Spain

• started in 2005
• Plan Avanza 2 started in 2009
• legislative measures with a specific budget
• also other stakeholders - private public partnership

Four lines

• Digital public services - 70% public services available online
• Digital citizenship - 24 mio citizens connected to internet, eId card
• Digital economy - 2760 ICT R&D projects in companies
• Digital context - 99% broadband coverage

Difficulties

• Difficulties for complete availability
• Geographic causes (mountains, dispersed population, high rural poulation)
• -> one of the highest costs in Europe to reach all the population

Incentives for private sector and regions in Spain to invest in broadband

• resulting in broadband access of 99%

Broadband in the EU

• seen as key importance for economic growth
• EU average: 23%, big differences between countries
• there’s a big gap between rural and urban areas

New EU BB initiative

• effective usage rather than coverage

Precondition for developing countries to benefit from broadband

• regulatory framework
• public-private partnerships
• competitive environment

Overall Avanza Plan was a big success and perfectly in tune with the EU goals

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Commentary

Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev/World Bank

World Bank will release ICT4D report next week

• 10% increase in broadband results in 1.38% in GDP
• better than other technologies

It’s important to understand the Korean case - what the key factors are that made their investment so succesful

Another project of World Bank currently: creating a broadband toolkit

Questions to Spain and the OECD

• Is broadband a public or a private good?
• Broadband can be seen as a platform for access to other public goods - which is one of the main arguments for investing in it; also offers a platform for green, low carbon growth
• What is the most appropriate level of investment?
• What percentage of sums should be investments in different sectors of broadband infrastructure?
• Low gap in Spain between rural/urban areas - is that a natural phenomenon in Spain?

Q & A

Belarus

• How do you calculate broadband coverage, what methodology is used?

Russia

• It’s the same discussion as 10 years ago with the internet “just invest in internet and all your problems will be solved” - but this didn’t hold true.

USA

• Is Open Access already practiced in OECD countries?
• What is the incentive for open access in a monopolistic environent?

Moldova

• Who should the infrastructure belong to? Private companies or the country? How to solve the monopoly problem?

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Tayler Reynolds

• Divergence in stimulus package - what is the best practice? We don’t really know because most countries didn’t provide numbers how they structured their investment. There is no one-size-fits all.
• Eastern Europe? Any infrastructure investment has synergies with other infrastructure investments. Broadband is just one piece in the puzzle.
• What percentage to the backhaul & last mile access? Depends on the circumstances, push the fibre network as close to people as you can.
• Investing in internet was supposed to solve all your problems? It will not solve all of your problems - broadband is an important infrastructure alongside electricity, roads, …
• Open access? To us it means non-discriminatory access to a network - competitive access. In some cases that involves infrastructure sharing.

Spain

Spain is holding the next presidency of the EU - the issue of broadband investment is on the agenda

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Conclusion

Some thoughts

• Consider bundling when creating the broadband infrastructure so companies don’t have to dig up the street again
• Stimulus packages mostly on backbone and open access infrastructures if there are limited financial funds
• Promote digital literacy and eGovernment with the government as an enabler to foster private investment
• There’s growing interest in the topic, countries have to learn from each other
• Russia: it’s vital to ensure the content which has to be put in the network, not just about extending the network capacity; this capacity will improve anyway - demand driven; more emphasis on the service side - not so much on broadband access

Once more our partner - the eDevelopment Thematic Group of the World Bank - will have a workshop in the context of their Government Transformation initiative.

It deals with Investing in Broadband Infrastructure as Part of Fiscal Stimulus Programs and the surrounding questions - what’s the reason for such investments, what are the outcomes and how can it be implemented. The case of Spain - which is also a big player in the ICT4D field due to my subjective judgement - will be presented.

Read a longer introduction at the event page.

The workshop will take place in Washington again, but also be broadcasted over the web.

What: Investing in Broadband Infrastructure for Economic Stimulus and Growth

Where: Washington DC, also available via webcast

When: 22 June, 15:00 Vienna time

ICT4D.at will of course cover the event on Twitter and here on the blog.

Notes from the World Bank workshop “ICTs for Women’s Empowerment” in Washington.

Detailed CVs of the speakers

Samia Melhem, Senior Operations Officer

ICTs are a great equalizer, they allow people to reach places and profit from services they would have never profited without them

Promoting women employment is also an economic factor - doing things differently - e.g. women project leaders, women teachers, …

also in IT policy making - diversity and variety makes decision more successful

they have also different information needs than men - but more men are producing (internet) content

Nilufar Ahmad, Senior Gender Specialist

why is gender important in the infrastructure sector?

• Sri Lanka - cybercafes have turned into “young men’s” club, where women don’t go to
• they don’t feel comfortable
• solution: cybercafe in a temple, women could use it
• would not be possible in Pakistan of Afghanistan

in infrastructure projects such effects should be kept in mind

women and men don’t have the same power, they don’t have the same needs

Claudia Morrell, CEO, Multinational Development of Women in Technology

strong focus on access when discussing gender inequalities

for women there are barriers in access - you have to ask what the barriers are to address them

literacy is important - do you speak the language the content is in? is there localized content?

women know what content might be interesting for women

women know what design is fitting for women

another key point: access to leadership, women are often excluded from careers

NGO capacity - who drives big, important issues forward in the developing world, where the civil society is not as strong as in the Western World?

Nistha Sinha, Economist, PRMGE

Gender is an important topic

solid evidence base is vital for policy recommendations

it’s important to know your data source and what it tells you

Q & A

how do you think should international organizations address ICT and gender problems connected to people being victims of the international crisis - shouldn’t be saving them from dying be a bigger issue?

• of course surviving is more important, but ICT literacy can also be a big benefit in such a situation; any infrastructure can help save the population - streets, watter supply, as well as ICT - providing possibility to get a job

there is not enough data right now about indicators concerning gender - or does the panel know about a indicator framework? or is anybody working on that?

• there is no universal framework the World Bank has adopted
• figuring out the indicators is important and is still lacking
• it’s also vital to know what to do with the indicators - how to use them

why is there not enough support on security in the context of projects? is there a thought ensuring security so that the work becomes sustainable?

• of course security is a substantial issue and needs to be looked after; generally projects in the development context need to shift their focus towards sustainability which also involves security

recommendation: number one issue for global corporation currently is (out)sourcing and finding the perfect workforce for their needs, so inject the private sector business with your views that women in ICTs have large potentials; what is the communication with the private sector to assist and collaborate on the topic?

• demand for it is increasing - also in developing countries, see example of India
• the comment is valuable and maybe it is possible to create a set of advice what to put in the report to address these topics

Notes from the World Bank workshop on “Financial Crisis and Cloud Computing” in Washington.

Country Perspectives

Armenia

• Founding a new network for enhanced usage - financed be government in partnership with the World Bank
• Youth involvement is very important, social networks have to be integrated
• There is a lot of scientific potential for the cloud

Belarus

• Has a cloud infrastructure already
• Provides infrastructure as a service - for education and SME startups
• When getting funding from World Bank & partnership with technology companies, Belarus is ready to participate

Sri Lanka

• In the process of moving government services to an already existing data centre and subsequently to the cloud
• But now all applications, only certain ones
• The potential for the government is enormous

Russia

• issues with data security when outsourcing services
• several areas for using the cloud - electronic government interchange systems, digital documents
• if you have services prepared for the cloud then it will be easy to switch there
• in the future the complexity of infrastructure will be too high to keep it inside -> switching to cloud computing

Tanzania

• moving currently from the 19th to the 21st century
• using the cloud is a big opportunity - just as mobile phones for healthcare
• the opportunities for using IT are going to grow tremendously due to the new backbone which will arrive soon; also a new super computer will be installed in Tanzania soon
• the economies of scale that cloud computing offers are really unique

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Industry Perspectives: Panel Discussion

Dan Burton (Salesforce.com)

Start with the idea - every consumer was using the web, no use for buying hardware & training & upgradin, it just works

but the companies didn’t do that - but why?

Salesforce offers services for many companies, it just works, the have seen that it’s easy, cheap and flexible

perspectives are that in the future 25% of all software sold are cloud computing services

Also interesting for governments and NGOs

Example: site for one week with 10 mil hits, then turned off - no problem

Salesforce understands security and privacy concerns - but we meet international security standards

Advice: not “I put all of my data in the cloud” -> but incremental approach, trying out

Data centres are a huge expense - cloud computing means outsourcing this expense to the internet

Rizwan Khaliq (IBM)

There’s a lot of discussion about technology - but it should be a discussion “what is the value of cloud computing”

The government shouldn’t need to be concerned about buying 10 new servers

Data privacy and security shouldn’t be a reason not to do something - it should be an issue of course

It’s useful for governments to buy services, not hardware - so they can concentrate on their core competencies - that’s what cloud computing is offering

IBM is heavily financing in the microfinance world

Cloud computing offers developing countries the possibility to come to the 21st century very quickly

Andres Escobero (SUN)

Can public services be provided by cloud computing? Yes - they may even benefit from that

Which services can be put to the cloud without any security and privacy concerns?

What is the role of the World Bank?

• Training
• Can facilitate the clustering of interested entities in a country -> good for the economy

Vendor lock-in - with using open standards & open source this can be avoided

Cloud computing can be used in the scientific community - countries don’t need to invest huge amounts of money for the infrastructure

How can local communities benefit? The government has to create the conditions for infrastructure as a service - so local companies exploit that service

Noah Sandidge (Microsoft)

Microsoft philiosophy: software + services

customers should have choice what hey want to use

for governments - doesn’t have to be a public cloud, maybe also private

start with the best possible infrastructure

vital: fixed, granted SLAs

withough the expertise it’s not a good idea to create, maintain, … a data centre - it may turn into a big money pit

important points

• implement
• security
• standards

Calvin Tu (Oracle), by phone

cloud computing has a lot of value - more and more on the commercial side, but also for governments

security, availabilty of service is important for customers - they ask: is it proven?

cloud computing and software as a service are convenient - but it doesn’t mean you should take all your operations to the cloud

it should be a complement to your overall IT strategy

Q & A

Tanzania

• The companies which are providing free services on the cloud  - is there a problem with sustainability in developing countres - as there are only few people consuming there?

Twitter

• Are there plans to build cloud computing datacenters in developing country regions too?
• Why country perspectives and not regional perspectives?

Audience

• Open approach - how do we assure that openness will be continued with cloud computing?
• Portability - is there anybody working on a framework for that?

Free services - the private industry is not in the business to provide free services, but has to have ROI; public private partnerships may be a way to move things forward; the government should provide these services to their citizens - also by partnerships with private sector

Location of data centres - the customer is always right - if they want it at some country the company will build it; from a technological perspective that makes no sense; because of service requirements it is necessary to spread data centres over several regions;

Openness - now, with every platform it’s possible to use every application, the cloud should also give the possibility for that; porting the services is hard but companies are working on that; an entrance and exit strategy is necessary before deciding to use a vertain vendor;

Vendor lock in is not different with cloud computing that with regular systems

.

Closing remarks

Philippe Dongier, Sector Manager, Global ICT Department, World Bank

Consensus - great potentials

Using the cloud - using a more compentent provider for services

Risks - start with a low-risk application and see how it goes

Standards - are in development

Notes from the World Bank workshop on “Financial Crisis and Cloud Computing” in Washington.

Opening Session

Welcome: Philippe Dongier, Sector Manager, Global ICT Department, World Bank

World Bank is very much learning about cloud computing - it’s one of the three big topics in the initiative for government transformation

Security is a big issue here, Jerry has a lot of experience and will tell us more

Opening Remarks: Jerry Horton, Chief Information Officer, USAID

cloud computing is very much about infrastructure - CIO view

users look at it as data center and virtualisation of information

in this context for governments there are risks, but there are a lot of opportunities in cloud computing

USAID has a long tradition in IT projects around the world

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Global Overview and Lessons from Implementers

Drue Reeves, Research Director for Cloud Computing, Burton Group

cloud computing will change the way we do business, cost models, lots of issues, it’s overhyped

trust and security are clear issues

cloud computing is coming - and now is the time to prepare

IT is finally catching up with the internet

business and IT are becoming one

companies cannot afford anymore to build such big infrastructure

• traditional IT is too expensive
• traditional IT is not flexible enough - installation, maintenance, …
• traditional IT is too complex

typically: companies have their own data centres

future: most critical data, most critical services are kept internal

cloud computing - on demand, scalable, elastic service

cloud appears infinite in scale to the consumer

cost is connected to usage, not to infrastructure

companies will use the cloud in different ways - on software as well as on hardware level

cloud computing

• simplifies and optimizes IT
• on demand model
• vendors and trainers in cloud computing are highly professional

on the other hand

• vendor lock in
• the service is somewhere in the cloud
• the vendors don’t tell what the infrastructure look like
• if something is wrong it’s hard to find out what

the more similar your own infrastructure and the cloud are, the easier to move it

partnering between developing countries building their data centre

not all applications are ready to move to the cloud

what about quality of service? some vendors don’t provide that

your data may move to a different country

Bob Bennett, CEO of Family Service Agency of San Francisco

NGO in San Francisco with multiple funding sources

three requirements for NGOs

• make profit
• meet your funders requirements
• manage your client service

big challenge in 2004

• no money
• no infrastructure
• few computers
• not much knowledge about IT

solution: automating the treatment records -> Salesforce

• rapid development environment
• robust & scalable
• tailored for all the services
• possibility to interact with other organizations

we own our own customization for the critical data - for the core application there are specialists, anything can be 100% customized

everybody has a unique set of dashbords

overall the productivity increased by around 50%

the attitude to not work very much was changed, because productivity became more transparent

the system allows to track how the services are performing and to react immediately

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Commentary by Randeep Sudan, Leader of e-Government Practice, Global ICT Department, World Bank (TBC)

cloud computing in the context of developing countries

most important aspect - infrastructure for cloud computing, broadband

a lot of developing countries don’t have that in place

how are developing countries managing their data

US is very open with their data - data.gov

it would be a great thing to put this data in the cloud and make it machine readable - even in developing country

data centres are a good idea for countries to start with cloud computing

one approach is also to leverage private-public partnerships

often government worry about privacy

new approaches - citizen data is controlled by the citizens, they decide who can access what

maybe citizens find it easier to put the data in the cloud

skills that are required in IT are different to skills required for the cloud - governments should start looking into that

also universities in developing countries should provide hands on experience with cloud computing

.

Commentary by John Wille, Lead PSD Specialist, Investment Climate Advisory Services World Bank Group

mostly involved in implementing G2B services

cloud computing has great potentials to leapfrog traditional models of data storage and maintenance

particular in least developed countries there are many obstacles for cloud computing, some countries even now put services online for the first time

but the infrastructure development right now is enabling some countries to take advantage of these new services

the World Bank is required to take a more holistic attitude in terms of deploying services

there are a number of possibilities emerging for the Bank - e.g. connect isolated initiatives

what do we need to make cloud computing reality?

• products & applications
• portability to allow customers to move between vendors
• model for a national setting
• private-public partnerships

we need to understand how this is going to change the way we do business

.

Q & A

Armenia:

• interested in projects connected with use - are there projects which use the cloud?
• maybe the youth could be more interested as they are faster in adapting new technologies
• is bad internet connection a serious obstacle for cloud computing?

Belarus:

• will World Bank continue working with Belarus
• are there special methodologies information security for cloud computing so there is no risk for critical information - and how to tell if information is really critical or not
• what methods can be offered in the cloud to increase efficiency in government processes, how can you ensure that the capacities are not more as we need - increased costs
• what cloud computing services can be proposed for the scientific area?

Russia:

• are there standards for cloud computing?
• are there any examples of how the state can create the infrastructure for cloud computing?

Sri Lanka:

• has there been an evaluation concerning the legal infrastructure?
• how about portability and interoperability between vendors?
• what about security issues when data moves between different countries?

Tanzania:

• how was it possible to persuade the Liberia government to bundle their forces?

Twitter:

• How can Youth-oriented projects connected to cloud leverage mobile technology?

.

• Youth - has to be fetched where they already are - Facebook, …,  also let them use it at the workplace, encourage them to try it out
• University - services that are available are used
• Belarus - will definitely be supported further
• Information security - there’s not zero risk, but security may be better than in traditional infrastructure because data is aĺways in motion; it’s possible for people to crazy about imagined threats - so it’s a good idea to start with applications with lower security risk and see how it goes;
• Standardization - differs at each level, where we’re missing standards is at the Software as a Service level; currently there are no standards for data security
• Examples of solutions in developing countries - mostly in the private sector; in the next session there will be a talk on that concerning microfinance
• Examples of states interventions to provide infrastructure - new term: government as a service, government in Korea has invested in huge data centres, can be used not only at national level; the US helped funding the Dow Jones - cloud computing should work the same way;
• Legal dimension - private sector & financial institutions are controlled by national rules;
• Vendor locking - almost impossible to avoid vendor lock in; controlling the data (geographically) depends on the service level agreement & negotiations with the vendor;
• How critical is the internet connectivity - mobile communication is used as a way around, a lot of initiatives to provide connectivity will be critial to make the technology available; good software design can overcome limited broadband
• Bottleneck between government, cloud, provider -
• What kind of capacity does one need - you gain a level of efficiency by moving to the cloud; just going into the cloud

Questions and comments from the audience

Data centres are very hard to build - promise of cloud computing is that you don’t need a data centre;

of course there are security concern, but it’s just too hard and expensive to build an own data centre

there is no upfront investment in cloud computing

Should the worldbank provide a cloud to developing countries or create an environment where private sector would do that?

• This service should lie in the domain of the countries, not the bank

How does the San Francisco NGO experience translate to developing countries?

• The only big difference was the connectivity issue, otherwise the experience is highly relevant

Are there SLA templates online which help governments?

• It’s kind of a Wild West now, still it’s about everybody to organize their security

private clouds is not an aim and it’s not always necessary to keep control of your own data - it’s better to provide public clouds and have good regulations;

the bigger your scale, the more going into the cloud makes sense